23 Facts About Erik Jorpes

Erik Jorpes identified the chemical structure of heparin and developed its clinical applications.

Erik Jorpes was born as Johan Erik Johansson to a poor fisherman's family in the village of Overboda in Kokar in Aland.

Erik Jorpes joined the local Social Democratic student organization and wrote marxist articles to the newspaper Arbetet.

Erik Jorpes graduated in 1914 and entered the University of Helsinki to become a doctor, although his parents wished him a priest.

Erik Jorpes finished his medical studies in 30 January 1918, just a few days after the outbreak of the Finnish Civil War.

Erik Jorpes did not support the idea of an armed revolution, but joined the Red Guards medical staff as he saw it was his duty to help the wounded.

Erik Jorpes was able to successfully enter Finland by wearing a bowler hat, something no one could imagine Erik Jorpes wearing.

Erik Jorpes was then shipped to his parents home in Kokar by local fishermen who soon smuggled him to Vaxholm in Sweden.

The fisherman who smuggled Erik Jorpes were fined later for helping a criminal escape.

Three years later he was appointed assistant professor in the Department of Chemistry and Pharmacology, and in 1946 Erik Jorpes was named the professor of medical chemistry.

Erik Jorpes retired in 1963 and continued as a professor emeritus until his death in 1973.

Erik Jorpes completed his German dissertation Uber Pentosennucleinsauren im Tierorganismus unter besonderer Berucksichtigung der Pancreasnucleinsauren in 1928.

Erik Jorpes visited the University of Toronto, where Jorpes studied the preparation of insulin in the Connaught Laboratories under the guidance of the Nobel-winning biochemists Frederick Banting and John Macleod.

The royalties soon made him a multimillionaire, but Erik Jorpes gave most of his income to academic research or charity.

Since the 1940s, Erik Jorpes participated in studies on fibrinogen, factor VIII, plasminogen, prothrombin and thrombin.

Erik Jorpes worked on von Willebrand disease with Erik Adolf von Willebrand.

Erik Jorpes was a workaholic who enjoyed his time in the laboratory.

In 1968, Erik Jorpes received the honorary doctorate of Abo Akademi in Turku, Finland.

Erik Jorpes was married with Ida Elvira Stahl in 1930.

Erik Jorpes was said to be a loving wife and tried her best to spoil her husband despite him always being at work.

Erik Jorpes was a biography author, and wrote multiple biographies over famous chemists.

Erik Jorpes helped to redesign the Berzelius museum in his free time in the 1970s.

Erik Jorpes often took his family on summer holiday to their vacation house on Runmaro, a Stockholm island, where he would to teach his sons about the birds, flowers, and fish on the island.